The Hangover
by SweetSinger2010
Summary: She'd been ready with an ultimatum: Stop drinking or get off my ship. But she looked in his eyes and let it go. Friends don't let friends deal with hard stuff alone. Pre-Rebels Kanera.


A/N: This took me about 6 days to write. I started it before I saw "Jedi Night," and then finished it today, which is why it goes from funny to feelings real fast. I am never going to be over Kanan and Hera.—sigh— But the inspiration for this piece came from a hysterical tumblr post which reminded me what a rough character Kanan was in those early days, and how Hera must have really had her hands full sometimes trying to deal with him.

* * *

The Hangover

Kanan woke up so slowly and painfully he felt like he may as well have been coming back from the dead. Maybe he was.

He could already tell the lights were too bright, so he kept his eyes closed as he flexed his hands experimentally, bringing them up to rub and prod his face. He took stock: no bruised knuckles, no broken nose, no swollen lips or eyes. So he hadn't been in a fight—that was good. But he still felt like he'd been wrung through a garbage masher.

His neck ached from the odd angle he was slumped in, so he put his hands on the floor to push up and slump a little straighter, and the floor was…wet? What the _kriff?_ Come to think of it, the whole backside of him was damp, like he'd been dumped in a puddle. He wasn't outside, though—the ambient temperature was too stable for that. In fact, the air was slightly humid and fragrant. It smelled like…like…soap and spiced perfume.

It smelled like the 'fresher always did after Hera got through showering.

Hera.

Kanan decided now was a pretty good time to drag his eyes open. He blinked several times as he forced his vision to clear and focus. He was indeed in the 'fresher, unceremoniously heaped in the shower floor liked he'd been dragged there. He put a hand to his back and found that a wide swath of skin was scraped and raw; he _had_ been dragged there. He turned his head and repeated the blinking exercise, bringing Hera into focus.

She was sitting on the floor, wearing nothing but a loose-fitting sleepshirt almost long enough to cover the _short_ shorts she was wearing. She had one leg pulled up so that her chin was resting on the knee. A cup of caf sat on the floor between her hands. She looked almost childlike, but Kanan knew much, _much_ better than that. She was calm and quiet and it scared him enough that he found himself not even tempted to let his eyes roam over the exposed curves of her legs.

"Do you know where you are?" She asked coolly.

"In hell, I _think_." He rubbed his hand over his goatee aggressively. His pulse spiked with the nightmarish feeling that Hera was about to lay into him with a cold and righteous anger. And also—he could not, in fact, remember what world they were parked on.

"You're on the _Ghost._ "

"Y—yes," he said with unnerved uncertainty. He sat up a little straighter.

She sat up straighter herself, moving her chin from her knee and sitting cross-legged. She took a long sip of her caf, staring at him over the rim of the cup. "And who captains this vessel?"

"You do."

"I do, yes."

He looked at her, tried to read _something_ in her passive expression. "Did I—" He stopped, making a face. He wanted to ask whether he'd tried to…proposition her in his drunken state. He liked to think that he wouldn't have tried that, but he wasn't ruling anything out. "Did I try to get fresh with you or something?" He managed at last.

Her eyebrows raised only slightly and she shrugged. "No more than when you're sober."

He buzzed a stream of air through his lips, relieved. "Listen, Hera—"

" _You_ listen. When you and I met on Gorse, I told you I needed crew, not…" She waved a hand, searching for the right term to berate him with. "Not a functional drunk."

" _Hey."_ He started to get up and then his pounding head and surge of dizziness told him that was a really bad idea. He leaned against the shower wall, glaring at her. "I am _not_ a drunk. I _like_ to have a good time and, yes, I like to have a drink. But those are two different things."

"In the ten months I've known you, you've boarded my ship drunk nine times." Her voice was crisp, statistical.

He winced; had it really happened that often? "But never once has it interfered with my responsibilities or anything you asked me to do." He paused. "Until today," he amended grudgingly. It was true enough; he'd never had a hangover so severe that he couldn't help pilot the _Ghost_ or do a job with Hera. (Until today.)

She shook her head. "That's what's referred to as 'an escalation.'"

"Would you cool it?" He was starting to get aggravated with her puritanical attitude. "Won't happen again."

She tapped her mug on the floor, not looking at him. "Do you remember _anything_ about last night? At all?"

"No, not—" He dug in the hazy recesses of his hungover brain and very vaguely remembered he'd been in a bar after they concluded their business, and someone handed him a shot of the local stuff— _oh._

They were on Pamarthe.

"Yeah," Hera said when she saw the pieces click. "Port in a Storm. The strongest hooch in the galaxy and _you_ had three or four shots. Most off-worlders can't even handle _one._ "

He made a sucking sound with his lips over his teeth. Fragments of last night were starting to come back to him. "I'm aware."

"I don't even know how you got back to the _Ghost_ , Kanan, I swear I don't. You could have killed yourself."

He'd been looking at the floor, but he looked at her now. Her eyes were stormy, a crease between her brows. Was that… _concern_ he was seeing? "Like I said: it won't happen again."

She sighed before she said very quietly, "I went and talked to the bartender this morning. He said…he said you never even thought about touching Port in a Storm until after the Imperial Holo-Net broadcast started playing."

He closed his eyes, fighting a wave of nausea as he suddenly remembered all of it. "Please—"

"It was footage of the Empire Day celebrations on Coruscant, and…" Hera's lips pressed in a thin line. "They showed a Jedi execution."

The subject of his Jedi past was something they had very vaguely almost talked about exactly one time, and he liked it that way. He hadn't had such a bad time with Empire Day in half a dozen years; not since the last time they'd publicized a Jedi execution. Those were becoming less and less frequent as time went on—as there were fewer survivors remaining—but each and every time, Caleb Dume's terror reawakened, and Kanan dropped everything and _ran._

Hera was the only thing, the only person in the galaxy keeping him from running now.

And if she didn't know that, she was at the very least smart enough to have figured out that Empire Day had pushed him into a drinking binge. A _severe_ drinking binge. After which he'd stumbled aboard her ship—their shared home—in deplorable condition. He sighed heavily, figuring he owed her an explanation for that, if nothing else. He closed his eyes. It was easier to say this thing if he didn't have to look at her.

"I went for Port in a Storm because—because I knew if I got drunk _enough_ , I'd pass out and not have nightmares about the—about—"

"The Jedi execution," she supplied quietly. Her voice soothed his inner turmoil. "Empire Day."

"Yeah."

He gathered the courage he needed to open his eyes and look at her; as expected, her patient gaze was fixed on him. She shook her head gently. "And what's your strategy for next year?"

He silently begged the universe to let this conversation be over. "Come on, Hera."

"I'm serious." She shifted her weight, leaning forward. He looked in her eyes and saw nothing but muted compassion there—which was a lot more than he expected or deserved. "What if next Empire Day is like this one?" She asked. "What then?"

"Then…I deal with it."

One eyebrow arched high. "Like this?"

Kanan took a deep breath, clenching his fists. "If you tell me what answer you're looking for, this will go a lot faster." His tone was, apparently, enough to pique her temper.

There was a flash of emerald fire in Hera's eyes as she pushed up out of the floor and stood over him. "I don't want to talk to you again until you're _stone cold sober._ " Her voice was dangerous and low and for the first time _ever_ , he did _not_ find it attractive.

"I—"

Whatever he was about to say was violently cut off as Hera threw the rest of her caf his face and then turned the shower on cold, leaving him sputtering and gasping and spewing obscenities as she left.

* * *

It took about an hour, but Kanan finally materialized in the cockpit, looking clean and neat and spitting mad.

"You could have scalded my eyes out with that caf," he growled, jerking her chair around to face him.

Hera shrugged. "I didn't."

She wasn't just about to say so, but throwing the caf in his face might have been, in retrospect, a little too much. But _Force_ , if he didn't aggravate her to death—and concern her simultaneously.

"I couldn't tell if you were breathing," she blurted angrily.

He was still glaring daggers at her, but that expression softened just the tiniest bit. "What?"

"When I found you—passed out in the common room, by the way—your coloring was so bad and you were so still that I thought you were _dead._ "

He squinted and then rolled his eyes, clearly exasperated. "And what would I have been dead _from?_ "

"Alcohol poisoning!" She swiveled her chair so that she was staring at the windscreen, and not at him. They were still on Pamarthe, the _Ghost_ looking toward an enormous coastal cliff face. Propelled by high winds, waves pounded the rock formation mercilessly and low, grey clouds threatened rain. The oncoming storm mirrored Hera's mood perfectly. "You know that's a thing, right?"

"Yes, I know it's a 'thing,'" Kanan growled with another eyeroll. "But I—"

"I need you to stop drinking." She turned her chair again to look at him, twisting her hands in her lap. "I mean it, Kanan."

He looked taken aback and his eyes narrowed as he crossed his arms. "Or _what?_ "

He was fishing for her to give him an ultimatum, and she'd been ready to give one. _Stop drinking or find somewhere else to live._ She'd had a whole speech prepared, complete with counterarguments to anything he could possibly say. She didn't have time to babysit someone whose only interest was in seeing the bottom of a bottle, she was going to tell him. When they were on a job, she needed to be able to rely on a partner with a clear and sober mind. Their work was important and they helped people—no time for taking a bender. If he was unable to prioritize, then he could stay here on Pamarthe and take his chances.

And Hera knew exactly how that conversation would go: Kanan would end up staying here on Pamarthe and take his chances.

She looked at the man standing in front of her and in a flash of instinct and insight, she knew that, subconsciously, he wanted a reason to run. He'd been on his own for a long time, turning his back on his past and his fear and his pain and never answering to that part of himself. He wanted to keep drowning it out.

She saw his eyes and she knew he needed her to not let him do it anymore. Maybe he didn't know that, maybe he wasn't ready to see it. But if their partnership was going to work in the long run, he needed her to be the one to stand between him and self-destruction, to help him learn how to do that himself. It was going to take honesty and openness; maybe more than Hera was comfortable with. But she knew she was willing to be uncomfortable, to keep him around. (For the sake of their partnership and their work, she told herself.)

Her speech and her ultimatum and her irritation evaporated and he watched her warily as she stood in front of him. "Kanan," she sighed. "We—we're…friends, right?"

Her heart of hearts whispered that the word was too small.

Something strange crossed his face and he answered in soft surprise, "Yeah, Hera." He shifted his weight. "Yeah, we're friends."

She nodded. "Well—friends don't let friends deal with things alone." She surprised them both when she reached out and put her hand on the side of his neck, stroking the smooth line of his jaw with her thumb. Then she stood on tiptoe and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. "I'm sorry about Empire Day," she whispered. _Sorry you're in pain, sorry they took everything from you, sorry you have to constantly relive it._

She felt his body stiffen—whether that was a response to the sentiment or to the suddenness with which she'd redefined the boundaries of their relationship, she didn't know. But after several long moments, he relaxed and his hands found her waist. With his face buried in the curve of her neck and shoulder, he held her like a lifeline.


End file.
